Jack Kerouac - Poet | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets Beat Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1922, Jack Kerouac, baptised Jean Louis Kirouac, was the youngest of three children of French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada. He was raised speaking the French-Canadian working class dialect Joual until he learned English at age five. Kerouac studied at local Catholic public schools and the Horace Mann School in New York City, as well as Columbia University and The New School.

He was awarded athletic scholarships to attend Boston College, University of Notre Dame, and Columbia University, though an injury during his freshman season at Columbia kept him from playing and eventually led to his dropping out of school. In 1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine, and a year later joined the United States Navy—he served only eight days of active duty before being honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. Soon after, Kerouac was involved in the murder of David Kammerer, having helped his friend Lucien Carr dispose of evidence, and was arrested as a material witness. Unable to convince his father to pay for bail, Kerouac agreed to marry fellow writer Edie Parker in exchange for her financial support and moved to Detroit, Michigan. Their marriage was quickly annulled due to infidelity, and Kerouac returned to New York City in 1944. Upon Kerouac's return to New York, he lived with his parents in Queens, where he wrote his first novel, The Town and the City (Harcourt Brace, 1950). Through Lucien Carr, Kerouac had met many of the literary figures now associated with the Beat Generation , including Allen Ginsberg and William S.

Burroughs, and in 1949 he began his most famous literary work, On the Road (Viking Press, 1957), which was tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road." Kerouac finished the largely autobiographical novel in April 1951, though it remained unpublished until 1957. During that time, Kerouac completed ten other autobiographical novels, including The Subterraneans (Grove Press, 1958), Doctor Sax (Grove Press, 1959), Tristessa (Avon, 1960), and Desolation Angels (Coward McCann, 1965). In July of 1957, Kerouac moved to Orlando, Florida, while awaiting the release of On the Road later that year. Soon after, the New York Times ran a review lauding Kerouac as the voice of a new generation. The success of the novel garnered Kerouac celebrity status as a major American author, and his friendship with Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Gregory Corso cemented the influence of what became known as the Beat Generation.

Other poet friends of Kerouac include Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder , Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman , Diane di Prima , Lew Welch, and Amiri Baraka . Though best known for his novels, Kerouac is also associated with poetry of the Beat movement, including spoken word. Kerouac wrote that he wanted "to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday." And in his "Statement on Poetics" for The New American Poetry , he asserts: Add alluvials to the end of your line when all is exhausted but something has to be said for some specified irrational reason, since reason can never win out, because poetry is NOT a science. The rhythm of how you 'rush' yr statement determines the rhythm of the poem, whether it is a poem in verse-separated lines, or an endless one-line poem called prose . . .

In his introduction to Kerouac's Book of Blues, the poet Robert Creeley writes, "A complaint commonly lodged against Kerouac is that he was at best a self-taught 'natural,' at worst an example of the cul de sac the autodidact in the arts invariably comes to, a solipsistic 'world' of his own limitations and confusions." He goes on to state that Kerouac's poems themselves "provide an intensely vivid witness of both writer and time." Other books published later in Kerouac's career include The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. Jack Kerouac died from a chronic liver disease on October 21, 1969, at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Selected Bibliography Scattered Poems (City Lights, 1971) Mexico City Blues (Grove Press, 1959) Fiction Desolation Angels (Coward McCann, 1965) Tristessa (Avon, 1960) On the Road | novel by Kerouac | Britannica.com novel by Kerouac To Kill a Mockingbird On the Road, novel by Jack Kerouac , written over the course of three weeks in 1951 and published in 1957. The free-form book describes a series of frenetic trips across the United States by a number of penniless young people who are in love with life, beauty, jazz, sex, drugs, speed, and mysticism and who have absolute contempt for alarm clocks, timetables, road maps, mortgages, pensions, and all traditional American rewards for industry. The book was one of the first novels associated with the Beat movement of the 1950s.

Visitors at a 2006 exhibition in San Francisco viewing a 36-foot (11-metre) section of the scroll … Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Jack Kerouac March 12, 1922 Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S. October 21, 1969 St. Petersburg, Florida American novelist, poet, and leader of the Beat movement whose most famous book, On the Road (1957), had broad cultural influence before it was recognized for its literary merits. On the Road captured the spirit of... in roman à clef ...de Beauvoir’s Mandarins (1954), in which the disguised characters are immediately recognizable only to a small circle of insiders. Jack Kerouac fictionalized his own experiences in On the Road (1957). Primary Colors (1996) drew widespread attention in the United States as much for its protagonist—based closely on U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton—as for... More about On the Road 2 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References example of roman à clef (in roman à clef ) External Links Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback.

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Please try again later. Close Article Title: On the Road Website Name: Encyclopædia Britannica Date Published: April 11, 2016 URL: Access Date: January 20, 2017 Share On the Road is published - Sep 05, 1957 - HISTORY.com On the Road is published Share this: On the Road is published Author On the Road is published URL Publisher A+E Networks One of the first novels of the Beat movement of the 1950s, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, is published on this day in 1957. The novel chronicles the cross-country wanderings of a Kerouac-like hero, Sal Paradise, and his pal Dean Moriarty, and their free-ranging encounters with drugs, free love, and the budding counterculture. The book, which Kerouac wrote in just three weeks, became an instant classic. Although a credo of the Beat-inspired Hippie movement of the 1960s was “Never trust anyone over 30,” Kerouac was 35 when the book came out.

He had long been associated with the Beat movement when On the Road came out, and the novel is filled with characters based on Beat figures like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Kerouac was born in March 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The son of French-Canadian parents, he learned English as a second language. In high school, Kerouac was a football star and won a scholarship to Columbia University. In World War II, he served in the Navy but was expelled for severe personality problems. He became a merchant seaman. In the late 1940s, he wandered the United States and Mexico and wrote his first novel, The Town and the City. His later novels included The Dharma Bums (1958), The Subterraneans (1958), and Lonesome Traveler (1960). Kerouac was a heavy drinker when he died in Florida from an internal hemorrhage, at the age of 47, on October 21, 1969.

Related Videos Jack Kerouac | American writer | Britannica.com American writer Alternative Title: Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac Jack Kerouac June Jordan Jack Kerouac, original name Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac (born March 12, 1922, Lowell , Massachusetts , U.S.—died October 21, 1969, St. Petersburg , Florida ), American novelist, poet, and leader of the Beat movement whose most famous book, On the Road (1957), had broad cultural influence before it was recognized for its literary merits. On the Road captured the spirit of its time as no other work of the 20th century had since F. Scott Fitzgerald ’s The Great Gatsby (1925). Jack Kerouac, c. 1965. Hulton Archive/Getty Images Childhood and early influences Lowell, Massachusetts, a mill town, had a large French Canadian population. While Kerouac’s mother worked in a shoe factory and his father worked as a printer, Kerouac attended a French Canadian school in the morning and continued his studies in English in the afternoon.

He spoke joual, a Canadian dialect of French, and so, though he was an American, he viewed his country as if he were a foreigner. Kerouac subsequently went to the Horace Mann School , a preparatory school in New York City , on a gridiron football scholarship. There he met Henri Cru, who helped Kerouac find jobs as a merchant seaman, and Seymour Wyse, who introduced Kerouac to jazz . In 1940 Kerouac enrolled at Columbia University , where he met two writers who would become lifelong friends: Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs . Together with Kerouac, they are the seminal figures of the literary movement known as Beat, a term introduced to Kerouac by Herbert Huncke , a Times Square junkie, petty thief, hustler, and writer. It meant “down-and-out” as well as “beatific” and therefore signified the bottom of existence (from a financial and an emotional point of view) as well as the highest, most spiritual high. Kerouac’s childhood and early adulthood were marked by loss: his brother Gerard died in 1926, at age nine.

Kerouac’s boyhood friend Sebastian Sampas died in 1944 and his father, Leo, in 1946. In a deathbed promise to Leo, Kerouac pledged to care for his mother, Gabrielle, affectionately known as Memere. Kerouac was married three times: to Edie Parker (1944); to Joan Haverty (1951), with whom he had a daughter, Jan Michelle; and to Stella Sampas (1966), the sister of Sebastian, who had died at Anzio, Italy, during World War II . On the Road and other early work By the time Kerouac and Burroughs met in 1944, Kerouac had already written a million words. More words came in the wake of Kerouac’s brief detainment in August 1944, when friend and fellow Beat Lucien Carr —who had introduced him to Burroughs and Ginsberg—confessed to having killed David Kammerer, a longtime admirer whose advances had gotten aggressive, in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Kerouac assisted Carr in disposing of Kammerer’s glasses and the knife used in the killing.

When Carr eventually confessed to the police, Kerouac was arrested as a material witness. He was bailed out by Parker’s parents; at that time she was his girlfriend, and her parents insisted that the couple marry before he was released. Kerouac and Burroughs collaborated on a novelization of the events, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks , soon after. It went unpublished until 2008. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent In 1944 Kerouac also wrote a novella, a roman à clef about his childhood in Massachusetts. He left it unfinished, however, and then lost the manuscript, which was eventually sold at auction for nearly $100,000 in 2002, having been discovered years earlier in a Columbia University dorm. It was published, along with some of Kerouac’s notes on the book and some letters to his father, as The Haunted Life, and Other Writings in 2014.

That novella was just one expression of Kerouac’s boyhood ambition to write “the great American novel .” His first published novel, The Town & the City (1950), received favourable reviews but was considered derivative of the novels of Thomas Wolfe , whose Time and the River (1935) and You Can’t Go Home Again (1940) were then popular. In his novel Kerouac articulated the “New Vision,” that “everything was collapsing,” a theme that would dominate his grand design to have all his work taken together as “one vast book”—The Legend of Duluoz. A Study of Poetry Yet Kerouac was unhappy with the pace of his prose. The music of bebop jazz artists Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker began to drive Kerouac toward his “spontaneous bop prosody,” as Ginsberg later called it, which took shape in the late 1940s through various drafts of his second novel, On the Road.

The original manuscript, a scroll written in a three-week blast in 1951, is legendary: composed of approximately 120 feet (37 metres) of paper taped together and fed into a manual typewriter, the scroll allowed Kerouac the fast pace he was hoping to achieve. He also hoped to publish the novel as a scroll so that the reader would not be encumbered by having to turn the pages of a book. Rejected for publication at first, it finally was printed as a book in 1957. In the interim , Kerouac wrote several more “true-life” novels, Doctor Sax (1959), Maggie Cassidy (1959), and Tristessa (1960) among them. Visitors at a 2006 exhibition in San Francisco viewing a 36-foot (11-metre) section of the scroll … Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Note and postcard from Jack Kerouac to Malcolm Cowley, Kerouac’s editor at Viking Press, April 1956.

The Newberry Library, Gift of Malcolm Cowley, 1969 (A Britannica Publishing Partner) Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Kerouac found himself a national sensation after On the Road received a rave review from The New York Times critic Gilbert Millstein. While Millstein extolled the literary merits of the book, to the American public the novel represented a departure from tradition. Kerouac, though, was disappointed with having achieved fame for what he considered the wrong reason: little attention went to the excellence of his writing and more to the novel’s radically different characters and its characterization of hipsters and their nonconformist celebration of sex, jazz, and endless movement. The character Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady, another important influence on Kerouac’s style) was an American archetype , embodying “IT,” an intense moment of heightened experience achieved through fast driving, talking, or “blowing” (as a horn player might) or in writing.

In On the Road Sal Paradise explains his fascination with others who have “IT,” such as Dean Moriarty and Rollo Greb as well as jazz performers: “The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” These are characters for whom the perpetual now is all. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Readers often confused Kerouac with Sal Paradise, the amoral hipster at the centre of his novel. The critic Norman Podhoretz famously wrote that Beat writing was an assault against the intellect and against decency. This misreading dominated negative reactions to On the Road. Kerouac’s rebellion, however, is better understood as a quest for the solidity of home and family, what he considered “the hearthside ideal.” He wanted to achieve in his writing that which he could find neither in the promise of America nor in the empty spirituality of Roman Catholicism; he strived instead for the serenity that he had discovered in his adopted Buddhism . Kerouac felt that the Beat label marginalized him and prevented him from being treated as he wanted to be treated, as a man of letters in the American tradition of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman .

Sketching, poetry, and Buddhism Despite the success of the “spontaneous prose” technique Kerouac used in On the Road, he sought further refinements to his narrative style. Following a suggestion by Ed White, a friend from his Columbia University days, that he sketch “like a painter, but with words,” Kerouac sought visual possibilities in language by combining spontaneous prose with sketching. Visions of Cody (written in 1951–52 and published posthumously in 1972), an in-depth, more poetic variation of On the Road describing a buddy trip and including transcripts of his conversation with Cassady (now fictionalized as Cody), was the most successful realization of the sketching technique. As he continued to experiment with his prose style, Kerouac also bolstered his standing among the Beat writers as a poet supreme. With his sonnets and odes he ranged across Western poetic traditions. He also experimented with the idioms of blues and jazz in such works as Mexico City Blues (1959), a sequential poem comprising 242 choruses.

After he met the poet Gary Snyder in 1955, Kerouac’s poetry , as well as that of Ginsberg and fellow Beats Philip Whalen and Lew Welch, began to show the influence of the haiku , a genre mostly unknown to Americans at that time. (The haiku of Bashō , Buson , Masaoka Shiki , and Issa had not been translated into English until the pioneering work of R.H. Blyth in the late 1940s.) While Ezra Pound had modeled his poem “ In a Station of the Metro ” (1913) after Japanese haiku, Kerouac, departing from the 17-syllable, 3-line strictures, redefined the form and created an American haiku tradition. In the posthumously published collection Scattered Poems (1971), he proposed that the “Western haiku” simply say a lot in three short lines: Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.

Trending Topics Eyjafjallajökull volcano In his pocket notebooks, Kerouac wrote and rewrote haiku, revising and perfecting them. He also incorporated his haiku into his prose. His mastery of the form is demonstrated in his novel The Dharma Bums (1958). Kerouac turned to Buddhist study and practice from 1953 to 1956, after his “road” period and in the lull between composing On the Road in 1951 and its publication in 1957. In the fall of 1953 he finished The Subterraneans (it would be published in 1958). Fed up with the world after the failed love affair upon which the book was based, he read Henry David Thoreau and fantasized a life outside civilization. He immersed himself in the study of Zen, and he became acquainted with the writings of American Buddhist popularizer Dwight Goddard, particularly the second edition (1938) of his A Buddhist Bible.

Kerouac began his genre-defying Some of the Dharma in 1953 as reader’s notes on A Buddhist Bible, and the work grew into a massive compilation of spiritual material, meditations, prayers, haiku, and musings on the teaching of Buddha . In an attempt to replicate the experience of Han Shan, a reclusive Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty (618–907), Kerouac spent 63 days atop Desolation Peak in Washington state. Kerouac recounted this experience in Desolation Angels (1965) using haiku as bridges (connectives in jazz) between sections of spontaneous prose. In 1956 he wrote a sutra , The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. He also began to think of his entire oeuvre as a “Divine Comedy of the Buddha,” thereby combining Eastern and Western traditions. Later work By the 1960s Kerouac had finished most of the writing for which he is best known. In 1961 he wrote Big Sur in 10 days while living in the cabin of Lawrence Ferlinghetti , a fellow Beat poet, in California’s Big Sur region.

Two years later Kerouac’s account of his brother’s death was published as the spiritual Visions of Gerard. Another important autobiographical book, Vanity of Duluoz (1968), recounts stories of his childhood, his schooling, and the dramatic scandals that defined early Beat legend . Jack Kerouac (right) and Robert Frank on the set of the film Pull My Daisy … John Cohen—Hulton Archive/Getty Images In 1969 Kerouac was broke, and many of his books were out of print. An alcoholic, he was living with his third wife and his mother in St. Petersburg, Florida. He spent his time at the Beaux Arts coffeehouse in nearby Pinellas Park and in local bars, such as the Wild Boar in Tampa. A week after he was beaten by fellow drinkers whom he had antagonized at the Cactus Bar in St.

Petersburg, he died of internal hemorrhaging in front of his television while watching The Galloping Gourmet—the ultimate ending for a writer who came to be known as the “martyred king of the Beats.” Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems (2012) gathered all of his published poetry collections along with poems that appeared in his fiction and elsewhere. The volume also contained six previously unpublished poems. Assessment Kerouac’s insistence upon “First thought, best thought” and his refusal to revise was controversial. He felt that revision was a form of literary lying, imposing a form farther away from the truth of the moment, counter to his intentions for his “true-life” novels. For the composition of haiku, however, Kerouac was more exacting. Yet he accomplished the task of revision by rewriting. Hence, there exist several variations of On the Road, the final one being the 1957 version that was a culmination of Kerouac’s own revisions as well as the editing of his publisher. Significantly, Kerouac never saw the final manuscript before publication. Still, many critics found the long sweeping sentences of On the Road ragged and grammatically derelict .

Kerouac explained his quest for pure, unadulterated language—the truth of the heart unobstructed by the lying of revision—in two essays published in the Evergreen Review: “ Essentials of Spontaneous Prose ” (1958) and “ Belief and Technique for Modern Prose ” (1959). On the grammatically irreverent sentences, Kerouac extolled a “method” eschewing conventional punctuation in favour of dashes. In “ Essentials of Spontaneous Prose ” he recommended the “vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases)”; the dash allowed Kerouac to deal with time differently, making it less prosaic and linear and more poetic. He also described his manner of developing an image, which began with the “jewel center,” from which he wrote in a “semi-trance,” “without consciousness,” his language governed by sound, by the poetic effect of alliteration and assonance, until he reached a plateau. A new “jewel center” would be initiated, stronger than the first, and would spiral out as he riffed (in an analogy with a jazz musician).

He saw himself as a horn player blowing one long note, as he told interviewers for The Paris Review. His technique explains the unusual organization of his writing, which is not haphazard or sloppy but systematic in the most-individualized sense. In fact, Kerouac revised On the Road numerous times by recasting his story in book after book of The Legend of Duluoz. His “spontaneity” allowed him to develop his distinct voice. Library Booklists and Bibliographies: Literary Births: March (1936), and Collected Poems (1939). Housman's poetic influences were Shakespeare, Scottish ballads, and Heine. In addition to his poetry, Housman also published editions of Juvenal (1905), Lucan (1926), and Manilus (1903-31), which were widely respected. There is short bio of Housman and links to some poems through the Academy of American Poets Housman exhibit . Housman's poems are available through the Univ. of Toronto, and the full e-text of is also available online. Robert P.

Tristram Coffin, Maine poet and reporter (18 Mar 1892 - 1955) Born in Brunswick, a 1915 graduate of Bowdoin, and later a professor there (1934-1955), essayist, poet, and novelist Coffin won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Strange Holiness . The Bowdoin Special Collections Library gives detailed information about the almost 50 linear feet of manuscripts, drafts, proofs, notes, personal records, lectures, plays, poems, books, recordings, and photographs that it holds. Two biographical pages are found on the Bowdoin Special Collections page on Coffin and from the Milne Special Collections page on Coffin at the Univ. of New Hampshire. Coffin's works include: Life in America: New England (1951). [Victoria Mary] Vita Sackville-West, British novelist and poet (9 March 1892 - 2 June 1962 ) Sackville-West was born in Kent, England, a place she always loved and returned to.

She led an unusual life, married in 1913 to Harold Nicholson, a diplomat and politician. Their marriage was purportedly a happy one, although each was bisexual and had affairs outside the marriage, Vita's most notably with Violet Keppel Trefusis and Virginia Woolf. The couple had two sons, Benedict and Nigel; Nigel Nicholson wrote a book ( Portrait of a Marriage ) about his parent's unorthodox marriage in 1973. Sackville-West was a prolific writer, beginning as a teenager and publishing her first book, Chatterton , a verse drama, when she was 17. She published about 50 books in all, including non-fiction, novels, and poetry. She won the Hawthornden Prize for her long poem "The Land" in 1927. Sackville-West also wrote a weekly gardening column for the Observer newspaper for years. The Vita Sackville-West page at the University of Southern California-Fullerton Library offers a short background and a lengthy bibliography. More biography is available through Finland's Kuusankoski Public Library. The Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia features a painting of Sackville-West.

In 1913, the Nicholsons bought Sissinghurst Castle and with Vita as plantsman and Harold as designer, they created a garden that is still one of the most important and well-known in the world. [Jean Louis] Jack Kerouac, American beat writer (12 March 1922 - 21 October 1969) Born in Lowell, Mass.

(other birthdates listed as 3/11 and 3/13), Kerouac published his first novel in 1950, titled Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928; d.2014), Colombian novelist and 1982 Nobelist Mar 7 German lyric poet Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715; d.1759) Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785; d.1873) Japanese playwright Abe Kobo (1924; d.1993) Jewish South African-born novelist and short-story writer Dan Jacobson (1929) French writer George Perec (1936; d.1982) Mar 8 Scottish essayist and children's story writer Kenneth Grahame (1859; d.1932), who wrote the children's classic The Wind in the Willows (1908) Colorado-born journalist, novelist, and biographer [Eu]Gene Fowler (1890; d.1960) Eric Linklater (1899; d.1974), Welsh-born Scottish novelist, poet and

 history writer New Jersey-born writer John McPhee (1931), winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize Mar 9 English poet Edmund Waller (1606; d.1687); English writer, reformer, and publisher William Cobbett (1763; d.1835) aka Peter Porcupine, who wrote political pamphlets and gazettes with strong radical viewpoints in both America and England Ukranian national poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (1814; d.1861) David Garnett (1892), English novelist and editor Byron scholar Peter Quennell (1905) U.S.

detective novelist and Mike Hammer creator Mickey [Frank Morrison] Spillane (1918; d.2006 ) Mar 10 German Romantic writer and critic [Karl Wilhelm] Friedrich von Schlegel (1772; d.1829) Joseph Karl Benedikt, Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788; d.1857), German poet, novella writer, and autobiographer, whose folksong-style poetic lyrics were set to music by Schumann, Brahms, and others Spanish writer Pedro Antonio de Alarc�n (1833; d.1891) U.S.

poet, librarian, and the first California poet laureate Ina Donna Coolbrith (1842; d.1928) born Josephine Donna Smith German novelist Jakob Wasserman (1873) NYC columnist Paul Coates (1921) Iowa-born playwright and novelist David Rabe (1940) Mar 11 Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso (1544; d.1595; epic poem 'Jerusalem Delivered') Dutch Renaissance poet Henric Spieghel (1549; d.1612; birthdate also listed as March 3) British poet and novelist D[ennis] J[oseph] Enright (1920-2003) British sci-fi satirist Douglas Adams (1952; d.2001; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) Mar 12 Besides Jack Kerouac (above), English biographer and antiquary John Aubrey (1626; d.1697), the first person to propose that Stonehenge was a temple built by the Druids Italian novelist and soldier Gabriele D'Annunz

io (1863; d.1938) English poet and animal lover Ralph Hodgson (1871; d.1962), considered one of the purest lyricists of his time Rui Ribeiro Couto (1898), Brazilian poet and short story writer Australian novelist, short story writer, literary critic Kylie Tennant (1912; d.1988) John Gross (1935), author of books on other authors, literary collection editor prolific Ohio-raised African American children's author and novelist Virginia Hamilton (1934; d.2002), whose M.C.

Higgins, the Great (1971) won the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award Mar 13 American journalist Oswald Garrison Villard (1872; d.1949) Sir Hugh Walpole , New Zealand novelist, critic, and dramatist (1884; d.1941) Bostonian Janet Flanner (aka Genet), Paris columnist for the New Yorker Canadian writer W[illiam] O[rmond] Mitchell (1914; d.1998) Mar 14 Michigan-born children's writer Marguerite de Angeli (1889; d.1987) Hollywood screenwriter and novelist Max Shulman (1919) John [Barrington] Wain , English novelist and poet (1925; d.1994) French novelist and director Bertrand Blier (1939) Mar 15 Paul von Heyse (1830; d.1914), German writer and 1910 Nobelist Irish playwright, translator, and poet (and Yeats' patron) Lady Augusta Gregory (1852; d.1932

), born Isabella Augusta Persse, co-founder and co-director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre English Roman Catholic poet and critic Lionel Pigot Johnson (1867; d.1902) American literary scholar of Irish literature, biographer, critic and writer Richard Ellman (1918; d.1987) Mar 16 Dutch poet and playwright Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero (1585; d.1618) French novelist Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634; d.1693), whose masterpiece was the novel La Princesse de Cleves (1678) and whose salons were frequented by Moliere, Boileau, and other important literary figures of the time French poet and the first Literature Nobelist (in 1901) Sully Prudhomme (1839; d.1907) aka Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme NY poet and playwright Percy MacKaye (1875; d.1956), best known for his pageant The Canterbury Pilgrims NYC-born children's writer Sid

 Fleischman (1920) Mar 17 German novelist and dramatist Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow (1811; d.1878) English author and illustrator Kate Greenaway (1846; d.1901) North Carolina-raised novelist and playwright Paul Green (1894; d.1981) Siegfried Lenz (1926; d.2014), German novelist, dramatist, and writer of short stories and essays; winner of the Goethe Prize in 2000 Mar 18 Besides Robert PT Coffin (above), French symbolist poet and Edgar Allen Poe translator Stephane Mallarme (1842; d.1898) English WW I poet Wilfred Owen (1893; d.1918) Pennsylvania-born novelist and poet John Updike (1932; the 'Rabbit' series) Brooklyn native, African American poet and the first poet laureate of Rhode Island, Michael S.

Harper (1938) Mar 19 Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821; d.1890), English explorer, translator, travel book writer, one of the first Englishmen to explore Arabia and reach Mecca South African novelist and autobiographer Peter [Henry] Abrahams (1919; some sources say born March 3), a key figure in South Africa's literary heritage New Jersey-born novelist Philip Roth (1933) Mar 20 Besides Ibsen (above), the Roman poet and writer Ovid (43 B.C.; d.17 A.D.) German schizophrenic lyric poet [Johann Christian] Friedrich H�lderlin (1770; d.1843) Nova Scotian novelist and essayist Hugh MacLennan (1907; d.1990) children's author Lois Lowry (1937) NYC-born author of books for children and young adults Ellen Conford (1942) Mar 21 Oregon-born poet and children's author Phyllis McGinley (1905; d.1978) Mar 22 English illustrator and medal namesake Randolph

 Caldecott (1846; d.1886) North Dakotan writer of westerns Louis L'Amour (1908; d.1988) English novelist Nicholas Monsarrat (1910; The Cruel Sea French-Canadian novelist Gabrielle Roy (1909; d.1983) Kentucky native, essayist and literary critic Houston A.

Baker, Jr. (1943), whose focus is defining the African American literary tradition Mar 23 female Ghanaian dramatist and short story writer [Christina] Ama Ata Aidoo (1942) Mar 24 English poet, artist, designer and true Renaissance man William Morris (1834; d.1896) English writer Malcolm Muggeridge (1903) beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) Italian playwright, actor, and director Dario Fo (1926; Nobel in Literature 1997) Mar 25 Transylvania-born (emigrated to U.S. at age 3) author of Broadway plays and musicals (including Kiss Me, Kate ), novels, short stories, and articles Bella Cohen Spewack (1899; d.1990), whose writing partner was her husband Samuel (born Ukraine, Sept.

16, 1899) Georgian novelist [Mary] Flannery O'Connor (1925; d.1964) NYC-born African-American fiction writer, scriptwriter, and essayist Toni Cade Bambara , born Miltona Mirkin Cade (1959; d.1995) Mar 26 Besides Housman (above), Louise Otto (1819; d.1895; site in German, with poems and biography), aka Louise Otto-Peters, German author and feminist Massachusetts-born author Edward Bellamy (1850; d.1897) New England poet and school teacher (San Francisco-born) Robert [Lee] Frost (1874; d.1963), who variously wrote sonnets, lyrics, and philosophical poems, and who was much in demand as a speaker American writer on mythology and comparative religion Joseph Campbell (1906; d.1987) Mississippi-born playwright [Thomas Lanier] Tennesee Williams (1911; d.1983) British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923) NYC novelist Erica Jong (1942) Mar 

27 German novelist and essayist Heinrich Mann (1871; d.

1950; brother of Thomas Mann) NYC-born (raised Hollywood) novelist and screenwriter/scriptwriter Budd Schulberg (1914), well-known for his screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954), which won eight Academy Awards Mar 28 William Byrd II (1674; d.1744), colonial Virginia writer Maxim Gorki (1868; born March 16 in old style calendar; d.1936) born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, Russian dramatist and novelist, one of the first Russian writers to express the view of the worker Michigan-born novelist Nelson Algren [Abraham] (1909; d.1981) Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal (1924; d.1997) Mario Vargas Llosa (1936; site in Spanish), born Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist and politician Mar 29 Deszo Kosztolanyi , Hungarian poet and prose writer (1885; d.1936) NY-born playwright, producer, and actor Howard Lindsay (1889) German novelist and

 essayist Ernst Junger (1895; d.1998) NYC-born novelist and magazine editor Helen Yglesias (1915; d.2008) Mar 30 Black Beauty French lyric poet Paul Verlaine (1844; d.1896) Polish (Hungary-born) actress, novelist, and playwright of the Naturalist school, Gabriela Zapolska (1857; d.1921), born Maria Gabriela Korwin-Piotrowska Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (1880; d.1964) Mar 31 English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell (1621; d.1678) English writer, and translator of (1859), Edward FitzGerald (1809; d.1883) Ukraine-born Russian realist writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809; d.1852), who penned the satirical masterpiece, Dead Souls Scottish author Andrew Lang (1844; d.1912) Mexican writer and diplomat Octavio Paz (1914; d.

1998; site in Spanish and English) English novelist John Fowles (1926; d.2005) U.S.

writer from the Bronx, Judith Rossner (1935; d.2005), who wrote Jack Kerouac (Author of On the Road) Biography , Poetry , Fiction Influences Neal Cassady, Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jack Neal Cassady, Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jack London, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Henry Miller ...more edit data Born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac's writing career began in the 1940s, but didn't meet with commercial success until 1957, when On the Road was published. The book became an American classic that defined the Beat Generation. Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, from an abdominal hemorrhage, at age 47. Early Life Famed writer Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts.

A thriving mill town in the mid-19th century, Lowell had become, by the time of Jack Kerouac's birth, a down-and-out burg where unemployment and heavy drinking prevailed. Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada; Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned Born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac's writing career began in the 1940s, but didn't meet with commercial success until 1957, when On the Road was published. The book became an American classic that defined the Beat Generation. Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, from an abdominal hemorrhage, at age 47. Early Life Famed writer Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. A thriving mill town in the mid-19th century, Lowell had become, by the time of Jack Kerouac's birth, a down-and-out burg where unemployment and heavy drinking prevailed.

Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada; Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned English at school. Leo Kerouac owned his own print shop, Spotlight Print, in downtown Lowell, and Gabrielle Kerouac, known to her children as Memere, was a homemaker. Kerouac later described the family's home life: "My father comes home from his printing shop and undoes his tie and removes [his] 1920s vest, and sits himself down at hamburger and boiled potatoes and bread and butter, and with the kiddies and the good wife." Jack Kerouac endured a childhood tragedy in the summer of 1926, when his beloved older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of 9. Drowning in grief, the Kerouac family embraced their Catholic faith more deeply. Kerouac's writing is full of vivid memories of attending church as a child: "From the open door of the church warm and golden light swarmed out on the snow. The sound of the organ and singing could be heard." Kerouac's two favorite childhood pastimes were reading and sports.

He devoured all the 10-cent fiction magazines available at the local stores, and he also excelled at football, basketball and track. Although Kerouac dreamed of becoming a novelist and writing the "great American novel," it was sports, not writing, that Kerouac viewed as his ticket to a secure future. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Kerouac family suffered from financial difficulties, and Kerouac's father turned to alcohol and gambling to cope. His mother took a job at a local shoe factory to boost the family income, but, in 1936, the Merrimack River flooded its banks and destroyed Leo Kerouac's print shop, sending him into a spiral of worsening alcoholism and condemning the family to poverty. Kerouac, who was, by that time, a star running back on the Lowell High School football team, saw football as his ticket to a college scholarship, which in turn might allow him to secure a good job and save his family's finances. Upon graduating from high school in 1939, Kerouac received a football scholarship to Columbia University, but first he had to attend a year of preparatory school at the Horace Mann School for Boys in Brooklyn.

So, at the age of 17, Kerouac packed his bags and moved to New York City, where he was immediately awed by the limitless new experiences of big city life. Of the many wonderful new things Kerouac discovered in New York, and perhaps the most influential on his life, was jazz. He described the feeling of walking past a jazz club in Harlem: "Outside, in the street, the sudden music which comes from the nitespot fills you with yearning for some intangible joy—and you feel that it can only be found within the smoky confines of the place." It was also during his year at Horace Mann that Kerouac first began writing seriously. He worked as a reporter for the Horace Mann Record, and published short stories in the school's literary magazine, the Horace Mann Quarterly. --------- Jack Kerouac est né en 1922 à Lowell, dans le Massachusetts, et est considéré comme l’un des auteurs américains les plus importants du XXe siècle.

Son œuvre la plus connue, Sur la route (On The Road, 1957), est l’un des romans fondateurs de ce que Kerouac nomma lui-même la Beat Generation, mouvement littéraire et culturel américain autour duquel se sont regroupés, n ...more In Vain - Poems | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets sign up to receive a new poem-a-day in your inbox sign up poem About this poet Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1922, Jack Kerouac, baptised Jean Louis Kirouac, was the youngest of three children of French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada.

He was raised speaking the French-Canadian working class dialect Joual until he learned English at age five. Kerouac studied at local Catholic public schools and the Horace Mann School in New York City, as well as Columbia University and The New School. He was awarded athletic scholarships to attend Boston College, University of Notre Dame, and Columbia University, though an injury during his freshman season at Columbia kept him from playing and eventually led to his dropping out of school. In 1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine, and a year later joined the United States Navy—he served only eight days of active duty before being honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. Soon after, Kerouac was involved in the murder of David Kammerer, having helped his friend Lucien Carr dispose of evidence, and was arrested as a material witness. Unable to convince his father to pay for bail, Kerouac agreed to marry fellow writer Edie Parker in exchange for her financial support and moved to Detroit, Michigan. Their marriage was quickly annulled due to infidelity, and Kerouac returned to New York City in 1944.

Upon Kerouac's return to New York, he lived with his parents in Queens, where he wrote his first novel, The Town and the City (Harcourt Brace, 1950). Through Lucien Carr, Kerouac had met many of the literary figures now associated with the Beat Generation , including Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, and in 1949 he began his most famous literary work, On the Road (Viking Press, 1957), which was tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road." Kerouac finished the largely autobiographical novel in April 1951, though it remained unpublished until 1957. During that time, Kerouac completed ten other autobiographical novels, including The Subterraneans (Grove Press, 1958), Doctor Sax (Grove Press, 1959), Tristessa (Avon, 1960), and Desolation Angels (Coward McCann, 1965). In July of 1957, Kerouac moved to Orlando, Florida, while awaiting the release of On the Road later that year.

Soon after, the New York Times ran a review lauding Kerouac as the voice of a new generation. The success of the novel garnered Kerouac celebrity status as a major American author, and his friendship with Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Gregory Corso cemented the influence of what became known as the Beat Generation. Other poet friends of Kerouac include Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder , Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman , Diane di Prima , Lew Welch, and Amiri Baraka . Though best known for his novels, Kerouac is also associated with poetry of the Beat movement, including spoken word. Kerouac wrote that he wanted "to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday." And in his "Statement on Poetics" for The New American Poetry , he asserts: Add alluvials to the end of your line when all is exhausted but something has to be said for some specified irrational reason, since reason can never win out, because poetry is NOT a science.

The rhythm of how you 'rush' yr statement determines the rhythm of the poem, whether it is a poem in verse-separated lines, or an endless one-line poem called prose . . . In his introduction to Kerouac's Book of Blues, the poet Robert Creeley writes, "A complaint commonly lodged against Kerouac is that he was at best a self-taught 'natural,' at worst an example of the cul de sac the autodidact in the arts invariably comes to, a solipsistic 'world' of his own limitations and confusions." He goes on to state that Kerouac's poems themselves "provide an intensely vivid witness of both writer and time." Other books published later in Kerouac's career include The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. Jack Kerouac died from a chronic liver disease on October 21, 1969, at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. Selected Bibliography Jack Kerouac is born - Mar 12, 1922 - HISTORY.com Jack Kerouac is born Publisher A+E Networks Jack Kerouac is born in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Kerouac was the son of French-Canadian parents and learned English as a second language. In high school, Kerouac was a star football player and won a scholarship to Columbia University. In World War II, he served in the Navy but was expelled for severe personality problems that may have been symptoms of mental illness. He became a merchant seaman. In the late 1940s, he wandered the U.S. and Mexico and wrote his first novel, The Town and the City. It was not until 1957, when he published On the Road, an autobiographical tale of his wanderings, that he became famous as a seminal figure of the Beat Generation. His tale of a subculture of poets, folk singers, and eccentrics who smoked marijuana and rejected conformist society was written in just three weeks. The book is filled with other Beat figures, including Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Kerouac wrote five more books before his death in 1967 in St. Petersburg, Florida. However, none gained the mythic status of On the Road. Related Videos

Question: Published in 1957, On The Road is a famous novel by which American beat poet, who was born on March 12, 1922?
Answer: Jack Kerouac